Revamped registry bill facing Senate debate

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Feb 29, 2008 | by Deborah Bulkeley

A second bill challenging Salt Lake City's domestic partner registry is set to be debated by the Senate.

The bill, SB299, was revamped in the hours after it was released Wednesday in time for an early Senate Retirement Committee meeting on Thursday.

It bans recognition of domestic partnerships and civil unions. However, it does allow cities and counties to set up registries based on financial dependence or interdependence -- as long as they are not akin to marriage.

It also allows Salt Lake to keep in place its benefits for adult designees of city employees.

"The first and foremost purpose of this bill is to reaffirm that Utah's policy relative to marriage is unprejudicial as set forth in Amendment 3 and the Defense of Marriage Act," sponsor Sen. Greg Bell, R-Fruit Heights, said of the state's ban on same-sex marriage.

Still, Salt Lake Mayor Ralph Becker pointed out that the term "domestic partner" is the term insurance companies across the country use to describe "two adults who share a common residence and are mutually interdependent.

"I understand that domestic partnership, in Utah, for some people has become a loaded term," Becker said. "It is an accepted term."

So, eliminating that term could be problematic, although Becker said it's not a deal breaker. There are also other issues, such as the removal of hospital visitation rights -- which is used to determine who can visit a patient and even make medical decisions when the patient cannot communicate -- from the bill.

"We still have a ways to go," Becker said.

The committee voted 4-2 to send the bill to the Senate for debate. However, because of a technicality, that vote didn't count and lawmakers later suspended their rules to place the bill on the debate schedule.

After hearing conflicting testimony about whether or not including hospital visitation was needed, Sen. Carlene Walker, R- Cottonwood Heights, asked Bell to look into the issue.

"I'm not sure there's a downside to defining that in the statute," Walker said.

The revised bill replaces one sponsored by embattled Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, which would have eliminated Salt Lake's registry altogether.

Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake, called the bill "simply unnecessary" but conceded that SB299 "is miles better that where Buttars originally started."

Former GOP lawmaker LaVar Christensen said while he preferred the original bill, SB299 is needed to prevent the "chaotic adoption of ordinances" that could chip away at Utah's marriage law.

"It's unnecessary," Christensen said of the registry. "What is broken in Salt Lake? ... the mayor's office has a much broader agenda."

It was similar concern of an encroachment on the state's marriage definition that led to the death of a bill Bell had sponsored in 2005 to grant limited benefits to couples based on mutual dependence.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. told the Deseret Morning News on Thursday that the registry issue is "fundamentally different" from that prior measure, which Huntsman had supported.

On the Salt Lake registry, Huntsman said, "From what I heard, generally speaking, it's consistent" with Amendment 3.

The bill will likely have strong support in the Senate, where every GOP lawmaker is listed as a co-sponsor.

However, Huntsman said his concern is over whether the state should get involved at all. He suggested true political conservatives would prefer "to allow duly elected officials at the local government level to determine their destiny from a public policy standpoint."

Contributing: Jared Page

E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com, lisa@desnews.com

Contributing: Jared Page